Journalism SPJ8 - Sci-Tech Writing

Is animal testing justified for medical research? Why or why not?

Animal testing should not be justified for medical research because
most animals used for medical research like rodents, that make up
95% of all animals used for biomedical research in America, over
80% of the time these results don't actually apply to humans.

Setting aside the overwhelming inaccuracy of animal testing, these

tests are also costly, these tests may cost an upwards of thousands
to millions of dollars a piece. These expenses result in fewer drugs
due to driving up the cost of development. Though it is true that
mice share 97% of DNA with humans, but that 3% really makes a big
difference, for example, mice have metabolisms that are 7 times faster
than a human beings, and different inflammation reactions. Besides,
humans are up to 3,000 times as big as mice, mice also react differently
to medicine than humans.

In an extreme example from 2006, a new cancer drug was tested on mice and
passed with no problems , however when human subjects were tested with only
1/500th of a mouse dosage, all of the volunteers went into catastrophic multi-
organ failure only within a matter of a few hours, making them needing to be
rushed to the ICU. Testing on mice just doesn't tell the same story with humans
as much as we think it does, we use mice as test subjects because they are cheap
and convenient. Besides, comparing mice to other animal test subjects mice are
a bargain, because they're great in a lab setting, since they're easy to tame,
store, and they breed like crazy.

Rodents are also very easy to be genetically customized, you can have mice that
have extra tumors, glow in the dark, or have no immune system at all. The Animal
Welfare Act, the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment
of animals in research, teaching, testing, exhibition, and by dealers. This Act is
enforced by USDA (U.S Department of Agriculture), APHIS (Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service), and Animal Care.

Additionally, we know that testing on mice is a problem, so why do we keep doing

it?
well, because it's easier, and at this point it's almost impossible to stop. From
Dr. Azra Raza, Director of the Myelodysplastic Syndrome Center at Columbia
University,
"Medical testing is almost entirely built around mouse testing. Researchers have
been using
mice since the 1800s. And students are taught on them from day one of school, and
most other
testing methods are prohibitively expensive.", meaning to say, you almost cannot do
a study
without the use of mice as your test subjects. At the moment, in the United States
the FDA
most certainly will never approve a human trial unless it is done in rodents first.

Finally, the real problem is cancer research has become so mouse centric, that we
cannot replace
mouse testing without overhauling the whole system in place. If we want to cure
cancer in humans
we should really be destroying cancer cells, but instead we are wasting valuable
time and resources
on mice.